DEC Wildlife Biologists are asking me (and you) to comment on their proposal to extend the aboriginal bobcat hunting and trapping seasons. I informed them that I’ve hunted small game in numerous states and as a yoot learned trapping techniques from NYS trappers Si Barrett and George White at the notorious Raquette Lake Boys Conservation Gulag. I went on to claim that I’ve matured and no longer support offing wildlife for any reason other than food and home invasion. I do condone the bludgeoning of Aussie sheep for my luxurious leather coat, which I proudly wear to dinner at Frankie’s. Inside Frankie’s I encourage the butchery of shellfish, finned fish, calves, lambs, suckling pigs, tomatoes, hops, barley and pasta.     

I explained that I won’t support the extension of the bobcat hunting/trapping season unless the DEC applies the same management philosophy to feral and free roaming house cats. There’re five thousand bobcats and millions of unrestrained house cats roaming NYS. According to the American Bird Conservancy, free roaming house cats kill from 500 million to a billion birds annually and are credited with the annihilation of thirty-three bird species to date. Bobcats claim no such distinction. And, bobcats don’t suck the breath outta napping infants. Pet owners go to great expense to pamper house cats, while bobcats are sold down the road. The Ruskies pay $400 for an American bobcat pelt with feet. Knock off $100 if a foot’s chewed off. Our fair weather allies won’t pay diddly-squat for a prime American shorthair pelt.

The DEC claims that extending the hunting/trapping season will afford people like me greater opportunity to interact with bobcats. When I asked how, they said I’d have more opportunity to legally maim and kill them. I told them that in all my decades of traipsing Adirondack taverns I’ve never once seen a living bobcat. I’ve seen a few stuffed ones like up at the Too Long Lake Hotel. Conversely, I routinely observe free roaming house cats prowling my Camp Moosemaple woods with impunity. Where have all my Tweety Birds gone, long time passing, Sylvester ate them everyone, when will we ever learn, when will we ever learn. The Kingston Trio lives.

I also mentioned that even though I was once a wannabe muskrat trapper, I no longer support the use of leg hold traps. I was a mere juvenile delinquent when I accompanied school chum Bob Wysocki along his prosperous Baldwinsville trap line. Rich people were paying $1.25 for a rat pelt making trapping more lucrative than peddling Messenger Newspapers. Come on, there was no PBS back then. I never heard of James Herriot and all his creatures huge and tiny. Who cares if a stinking water rat chews off his leg and gimps away to suffer a deplorable death. There’s plenty more where he came from.  Besides it was fun getting up at 4 a.m. and heading out into snow, rain, sleet and freezing winds to check fifty frozen traps before school started. That Wysocki was gung-ho. He probably became a mud Marine.

I mentioned to the DEC that I’m conflicted when it comes to leg hold traps because of my education. I spent my first three years at the University of Maryland in the pre-Med curriculum. We practiced comparative anatomy and physiology on fetal pigs because their anatomy approximates Newt Gingrich’s and feral cats because they’re cost-effective. I spent several semesters abusing embalmed specimens so I can attest that leg hold traps don’t harm dead animals. I mistreated all sorts of creatures in the name of science and sport until I heard Golden Earrings sing, “Where I am I to go now that I’ve gone too far, so you’ll come to know when the bullet hits the bone.”  The pain ain’t real ‘til you feel the steel, bro.  

Anyhow, I gave up my aspirations of becoming a surgeon because I was ambivalent about inflicting pain. I could foresee the day when I’d consider reconstructive surgery just another muskrat skinning. So I switched to marine biology in my senior year and hung up my gone fish’in shingle. I conveniently subscribe to the fish feel no pain notion. I told the DEC, who were getting pretty sick of me by now, that I swore off trapping but continued small game hunting. I loved blowing up game birds and bunnies because they’re tasty and I believed they led fleeting, futile lives. I’ve never shot a bear or deer. I like them too much and I don’t shoot things I like. I enjoy eating them if somebody else executes them. I’m a staunch supporter of game management programs that insure the promulgation of game and non-game species and allow hunters and anglers to follow their innate behaviors. I refer those who deny their hunter/gatherer heredity to Sigmund and Anna Freud.  

So here’s how I left it with the DEC. If a hunter/trapper isn’t good enough to bag unarmed bobcats between October 25 and February 15, tough luck. Game over man.  You had a fair shot and the bobcats kicked your sorry butt. There’s no sudden death overtime in hunting/trapping season. I told them that what’s fair for the goose is fair for the gander. If we can legally shoot and trap bobcats, ditto for free roaming house cats. They’re both Felidae, except one has an apocalyptic impact on native fauna. That would be Felis catus, your sweet little family serial killer licking his chops by the back door. The other Felidae’s survived 1.8 million years without Petsmart and is featured on the DEC’s more wanted list. Bobcats are out in the woods surviving by the rules.  Sylvester, you’re desthpicable.   

I advised the DEC to keep bobcats off the endangered species rollercoaster. Don’t use ‘em, abuse ‘em and then import aliens from Pennsylvania when NYS runs low, again.  “Why not collectively manage all of NYS’s free roaming felines,” I pondered rhetorically.  I also suggested that the DEC relocate two hundred Mendocino catamounts to the Adirondacks to cap the off-leash domestic dog population. Hello DEC? Yo, anybody?  Sufferin’ succotash, they hung up.